And yet, the only thing that brings your creaky muscles to align into a smile is the sleeping beauty next to you.
Among rumpled blankets, with open mouth still shining from the fluids of unconsciousness, there lies the one. The one whose sight is enough to set your senses on fire, to make your head swirl and your ego dissipate. The one whose memories are shared by you, and nobody else. The one whose touch is silk-coated firebolt. Whose kiss is the great gods' grace. Whose word is the holiest inspiration. To love, to care for, to spoil, to kill.
Then you both get up, get dressed, cover each other with kisses, just to peel the clothes right off again.
With the coffee mug in your hand, you gaze through the steam, through the window, through the world, and stop your focus only in the past. All that hurt. All those lost battles which weren't even seen by others, weren't even worth the blood, nor the tears. Casualties of life, now even if alive, dead for you. Pain, and motionless sorrow. Thank the god of love to have saved you, and raised you, so now you have someone to live for, some base for the rebuilding of your life from its own wrecks.
You walk around the house, fishing for pieces of clothing hanging from dryers, chairs, hangers, eventually being handed them all by the precious.
Tying your tie, you get lost within the pattern, and find yourself between the lines of the fabric, happy. For you have the one that can make you happy. Who keeps you alive. Who makes you feel like in constant delirium. Who makes you feel. With whom you wish to be connected forever. Mixed. Blended. From which mingle a new human could once grow, bearing all the joy and love that you share, who would be just like you both. Who you could cherish and who could cherish you. A student, a pup, a gem, a reason for pride, a mark in history, a way of immortality. Your own flesh and blood outliving you.
You leave the house, place kisses where they should be placed, and you go where you should go.
* * *
Some people, some age, somewhere far away in space and time, woke up just like you. Opened the exact same amount of eyes and has seen the same object of adoration. Of course, then and there, they would very much listen to the sounds and would definitely take a good look-around, in heartless order to keep themselves from being eaten, murdered, or driven out. Maybe they would fake death for a while, just to make sure.
And that smile, should it have flashed, wouldn't be a sign of happiness, but threat. Showing the teeth that can tear out a few arteries.
The supposed recipient of that smile would bow and show a bit of rough skin of their neck, to show surrender. That fellow human would have muscles and dirt on, attire reminding your progenitor of all the disemboweled carcasses and running and hiding and rolling in the dirt and darkness. Pictures of reality. In the head, on the cave's walls, before the eyes. Memories and dreams and hopes, interwoven to a homogeneous and rough surface that would shield them from harm.
Screaming and oxytocin, sperms racing to get the chance to become the new mutation that is strong enough to survive.
On the dusty rocks, near the forest and the pit, they would munch on a piece of raw meat. Some to be able to take out the next week's nutriment, some to be able to carry out the offsprings alive. They ate fast so the sun would not blind them while hunting, also, to get over to the next cave before the night falls and death comes to wipe their future off the walls.
They put on flayed animal skin bordering on parchment.
The precious other half would not go killing with you, for bearing a child and carving the meat requires her to stay. Bloody, pointy sticks would clank together and a last glimpse of a rounding out lover would be taken. More mouths to feed, but the only way of survival in the long run.
Meat would be obtained and blood would be spilt. For survival.
* * *
It strikes me as something infuriatingly arrogant to live and not realize the roots of unquestioned social obligations. Of course, mating and raising a progeny is safer with a pairing. Of course, we need euphemism and pretend to discover a new level of need. Of course, we need to make it sound like an aspect above the rest. To twist it into something suitable to our whichever gilded age, so it would seem safe, superior, and morally bound.
However, it's a very lovely rush of hormones when you touch or are touched. It's an even more enjoyable moment, when you understand or are understood completely. It's required and needed to have those points triggered, to have those chemicals rush through the body. It's hardly something subtle, or divine, merely a very bodily need, just like thirst and hunger. Of course, I'm told you can't die due to the lack of these rushes, should you resist them.
But then again, I rarely meet the men who only take a bite when death comes rattling.
Topic kindly suggested by the Singing-Thinking Sea-Foam
